Russia lifts ban on pork imports from Lithuania

04-10-2011 | Home | News

Russian veterinary services lifted a ban last week on the export of Lithuanian pork and pork products to the country, this was announced by the director of Food and Veterinary Service of Lithuania, Jonas Milius.

“Russian authorities on 27 September allowed the export of pork and pork products produced in Lithuania, except from the Kaunas region where there has been an outbreak of Classical Swine Fever,” said Milius. However, we did not receive permission to export live pigs, so this issue will be the subject of negotiations soon,” he said.

Since mid-July Lithuania has been banned from exporting pork to Russia, while the import supplies of live pigs to Russia have been prohibited since 1 June.

This year, 105,000 pigs in total were exported to Russia from Lithuania. According to official statics in the past year exports of live pigs in the country decreased 1.8 times to 282 thousand heads compared to 2009.

Pigs from Lithuania have not been shipped to the EU and Russia since June to August. Experts estimated that due to this ban on exports the pork industry of Lithuania have lost about 4-5 million litas (US$ 5.5 – 9.5 mln) of income.

The first outbreak of Classical Swine Fever in Lithuania was recorded on 1 June in the complex “Beržų”, and the disease spread to a number of neighbouring pig complexes. Due to the outbreaks in the country veterinary services had to destroy about 40,000 heads of pigs.

(By Vladislav Vorotnikov)